The South African Federation of Trade Unions fully supports the march by 10111 Emergency Call Centre workers to the office of the Police Minister’s office in Tshwane, on Tuesday 6 June 2017 to voice their concern at the minister’s negative response to their demand for increased salaries to bring them level with those in other government call centers.
1. In February 11th 2013 10111 workers met with the Suspended SAPS National Commissioner General Riah Phiega and the Provincial Commissioner L.t General Mothiba in a meeting at Gauteng 10111 to address members’ concerns regarding their salary level at SAPS Call Centre which is not on the same level as other government call centres, despite being the busiest emergency call centre with a with a high work load than the other government call centres.
2. General Phiega instructed that a task team be formed to benchmark their salaries against a few government call centres. Benchmarking was done against Home Affairs, Sassa, Sars, Crime stop and Presidential hotline call centres. It was completed on 30th April 2016 and the report was compiled and submitted to the Provincial office.
3. The task team recommended on the report that the salary level at 10111 should be upgraded to salary level 7(R226 211 p/a) which was also approved by the provincial management which includes the Provincial Commissioner. The Provincial Commissioner then sent the benchmarking report to the Acting National Commissioner General Phahlane for approval.
4. The Acting National Commissioner then sent his Organizational Development (OD) team to do a Job Evaluation of the post of 10111 call centre agents. The job evaluation was completed around October 2016 and it also recommended Salary Level 7. Members of Gauteng 10111 were denied access to the OD report as it was declared a classified document. L.t General Makgato confirmed that the OD Report also recommends level 7 April he was called by Brigadier Assegai on 18th of November 2016 during a feedback meeting at Gauteng 10111.
5. After realizing that the employer was not implementing the recommendations of the Task team and OD report, 10111 members decided to organize a march to the Acting National Commissioners office. The SAPS management requested an urgent meeting at Gauteng 10111 on the 12th of December 2016. During that meeting L.t General Makgato confirmed again that the OD report recommends that 10111 should be upgraded to level 7 and so therefore there was no need for a march as they will be implementing the recommendations soon. This matter was also substantiated by the unions as they said they also viewed it.
6. The matter was then taken to the SSSBC for a collective agreement but then the employer somersaulted declaring that they will not upgrade members to level 7 but instead they will convert the posts of the 10111 from Public Act to Police Act of which members will have to apply to be appointed as constables, a move which 10111 employees blatantly rejected because constable rank is on the same salary level as level 5(R159 000 p/a) of Public Act.
7. The whole purpose of this process was to upgrade members to a better salary level according to their work. Some of the members are already on level 6(R168 00 p/a) therefore the constable post will be a demotion to them. As a result on the 28th of April 2017 the members of Gauteng 10111 organized a march to the Acting National Commissioners Office to handover a memorandum of demands and members were demanding the following:
– Implementation of the original OD report findings.
– Immediate implementation back-paying from the date of the confirmation.
– Denouncing the idea of converting 10111 posts into constable posts.
– Response within 7 days which ended on 10th May 2017.
8. The commissioner’s office only responded on 17th of May 2017 with the same attitude that the posts will be converted to constable post as stated on the police act.
9. The members of 10111 supported by SAFTU are therefore marching to the minister of police’s offices on the 6th of June 2017 to voice out their dissatisfaction with the response from the Acting National Commissioner.
The details are:
DATE: Tuesday 6 March
ASSEMBLY POINT: Princess Park, Pretoria, 11h00
ROUTE: Princess Street and Francis Baard Street to Wachthuis
MEMORANDUM to be handed over between 12h00 and 13h00
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